Oh wow. Where to even begin?

I’m a private chef on Maui living my dream: cooking beautiful food in a beautiful place for beautiful people.

I’m a Northern Californian girl who grew up between the redwood forests and wine country of Sonoma County who grew up on tour with the Grateful Dead, and used my innate passion for hospitality to work my way up the food chain (pun intended).

I began working in the kitchen in local restaurants when I was sixteen and fell as much in love with the fast-paced environments as I did with hospitality. When I moved to San Francisco at eighteen, I continued hospitality work and attended the California Culinary Academy’s Le Cordon Bleu program. My early twenties were a blur of long days and late nights working all positions available in the city’s restaurants and nightlife, supporting production and dancing at music festivals, and then long international sabbaticals where I would backpack and volunteer on organic farms, falling deeper in love with food and the stories woven into each culture’s cuisines.

When I was twenty-five I had what I now refer to as my “quarter-life crisis” – and I quit restaurant work to find something easier on my body and my spirit. I quit restaurants after a decade for goood. I tried my hand at travel writing. I worked for innovative winemakers in sales and marketing. I learned how to design websites and manipulate basic code. I took a doula certification and worked to support natural birth education. I studied circus arts and learned how to fly. I did everything I could to find meaning and purpose.

But, it truly was when I started volunteering to teach inner-city teens healthy cooking that I found my calling combining my love of food with my love of people. I continued teaching, and in the process of this, relearned how to love the art of cooking.

At the time, I was heavily involved in the yoga community and was asked to cater a yoga retreat in the Joshua Tree Desert. That retreat changed my life! It still to this date ranks as one of the most difficult gigs I’ve had, cooking in intense winds and heat on camping equipment with nothing but propane stoves and coolers in my open-air kitchen, but something shifted in me that had been dormant. I felt alive, empowered, and innovative. I decided that cooking for others with love and intention would be my path.

After a decade of city life, I moved to Maui and began my journey to where I am today. I threw myself into cooking, yoga, holistic health, and wellness, and allowed myself the space to explore my true calling.

Now, I still call Maui home, and my work and passions intermingle through private chef work and specialty catering. In my off time I’m learning about new food, developing recipes, doing yoga or at the gym, hiking mountains, scaling waterfalls, and surfing small waves on my big board. I love to travel for both work and pleasure and love eating my way across cultures, finding inspiration equally in Thai street markets and Napa fine dining restaurants.

Food is my medicine, my art, and my life’s purpose. Nothing brings me more joy than sharing it with the many visitors here in Maui! After eight glorious years here on the island, I’m still discovering new fruit, new stories, and new ways to bring food from the farm to the table. I love classic cooking, but I also love challenging myself to customize menus with seasonal produce, various food preferences, or dietary necessities.

I like to say I “cook pretentious food in non-pretentious settings” and “healthy food that doesn’t taste healthy” – always working to surprise and inspire those around me, and in turn myself.

Overall I am just incredibly grateful for this life, this island, and the opportunities I’ve found that allow me to do what I love for a living. I can’t wait to see what recipe, opportunity, or adventure is next!